May

8

My First Website

Filed Under Internet | 4 Comments

This is a response to an old blog entry by Janette Toral on her Philippines Internet Review Blog, where she invited people to share their stories about their first website.

I got my very first e-mail address “timawa@laguna.net” (no longer valid) since November of 1996. I still had no computer at home, so I had to check my email at an Internet cafe in front of Ultimart here in San Pablo. I liked going there because it was airconditioned, and I spent the rest of the afternoon playing video games. I think my favorite back then was Duke Nukem.

When I returned from the San Diego Comics Convention in August of 1997, my brother gave me his computer. It was a 486 on a Windows 95 OS, 500MB disc space and 33 megahertz memory. I immediately applied for webspace with my email host server Laguna.net. I had a staggering 2MB webspace, which I immediately made use of. I didn’t know how to make websites so I just studied the HELP section of “What You See Is What You Get” type editor from Netscape Composer. I don’t remember the name of the program I used to edit graphics, but it churned out HUGE graphic files, which I didn’t realize would load so slowly on the Internet.

So my very first website, http://www.laguna.net/~timawa, came live on August 1997, with an incredibly slow loading page. Checking archive.org, they don’t have a record of that first website of mine, unfortunately. I did register my site with my favorite search engine at the time, Altavista.com. I also registered it with Infoseek.com (now go.com) and I was thrilled to see that my site came up in search results a few days later.

I learned to make images with smaller file sizes and I played around with navigation tricks and gags. Clicking on a link will bring you to a mock CIA page that “detects” illegal activity on your computer. I got a bit of vehement disagreement when I wrote in one page that I created Batman and not Bob Kane. I placed a button on one page that introduces a new touch screen technology on the Internet which people fell for.

I soon grew out of it and turned my website into a gallery of my work. The earliest record I can find of my presence online would be this page from June 1998, which I managed to retrieve from archive.org.

That’s not what the actual page looked like as I could no longer retrieve the images.

It’s just too bad because I was able to upload a considerable amount of material from August 1997 to June 1998, including my very first attempt at an online diary which includes many many entries, my San Diego Comicon 1997 report, reviews, drawings and so on.

Comments

4 Responses to “My First Website”

  1. Ed on May 8th, 2008 5:44 pm

    I remember when I had my first website in Geocities.com before it was bought by Yahoo!, then I registerd to Zoom.com where they had unlimited space but with bunch of popups and frame banners later on.

    Gosh. Those days huh? My first computer was…wow. I can’t remember. Haha!

  2. Janette Toral on May 8th, 2008 7:26 pm

    Hello Gerry. Thank you so much for sharing your first website story. Stories such as yours will help a lot in documenting Philippine Internet history. Will link to this. Cheers!

  3. Gerry Alanguilan on May 8th, 2008 8:09 pm

    Thanks very much Janette!

    Ed, that was Xoom.com, which is now a money sending and receiving site. I used to have a site there also. The very first time they offered the service there was no ads at all, pero nag ads din sila later on. Ang site ko sa Geocities at Tripod buhay pa! :D

  4. Blog@Newsarama » Quote, Unquote on May 24th, 2008 10:05 am

    [...] a new touch screen technology on the Internet which people fell for.” – Gerry Alanguilan, remembering the fun he had starting his first website back in [...]